Jimmy Smits was born in Brooklyn on July 9, 1955, son of Cornelius Smits, a silk-screen plant manager who came from Dutch Guyana (now Surinam) and Emelina Smits from Puerto Rico.
Smits spent most of his early childhood in Puerto Rico, eventually returning to Brooklyn. He attended Brooklyn’s Thomas Jeff-erson High School. From an early age Smits enjoyed acting in whatever form he could find. One of his favorite stories about himself involved the time he was six years old and imitated Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, hitting the table with his shoe, for the benefit of his family.
Smits played football in high school, standing six-feet-two-inches tall, but he eventually decided that sports would have to take second place to acting. He quit football and joined every dramatic production he possibly could, even going to other schools to join theirs.
No one in Smits family had ever achieved any schooling above secondary. Smits changed that by going to Brooklyn College to study drama. He took his B.A. from Brooklyn before going on to Cornell to earn an M.A. in theater. In going from a “lower-middle class laborer” background to the Ivy League, Smits encountered a certain amount of misunderstanding, if not resistance, from his family. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune he said, “They’re simple folks, and their knowledge of acting is limited to what they see on TV. They didn’t understand why I wanted to do the classics, stuff like Shaw and Ibsen. They couldn’t understand why I wasn’t doing Pepsodent commercials.”
As an ambitious young actor, Smits wanted to perfect his craft, working on high quality projects with high-minded people. In reality, however, he spent his first years in show biz playing roles that did not meet his artistic expectations. In his Tribune interview he said: “... there are lots of roles out there for Hispanics. The bad news is that they are often as unshaven thugs.”
Eventually Smits appeared in the New York Shakespeare Festival productions of Hamlet and The Ballad of Soapy Smith as well as an off-Broadway production Little Victories. But he had not achieved his goal of landing a major role.
Turning to television, Smits landed a role in one episode of the very popular “Miami Vice” series. From there he appeared in a major movie called Running Scared (1986) with Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines.
In 1986 Smits auditioned for the role of lawyer Victor Sifuerites in the new NBC series “L.A. Law.” He went to the NBC office in New York for his tryout, but in an interview he said he was “so bad, they didn’t even bother to call me back.” Rather than giving up on the role, Smits flew out to California, where NBC was holding simultaneous auditions for the part. This time he did a better job, and NBC gave him the role.
In 1987, as a result of his part, the Hispanic Media Image Task Force awarded him the Imagen Award for improving both the image of Hispanics on television and prospects for Hispanic actors and actresses. In 1988 the National Hispanic Bar of Mexico honored him for improving the perception of Hispanic lawyers. Smits has been nominated for Emmy awards 11 times for his work in “L.A. Law” and “NYPD Blue.” He won for “L.A. Law” in 1990 and won the Golden Globe Award in 1995 for “NYPD Blue.”
At age 19, Smits fathered a daughter, Taina, with his then-girlfriend Barbara. They were married in 1981 and two years later their son Joaquin was born. Since his divorce he and actress Wanda De Jesus have been together.
Smits’ other film credits include The Believers (’87), Glitz (’88), Old Gringo (’89), Fires Within (’91), Vital Signs (’90), Switch (1991), Stephen King’s The Tommyknockers (’93), Star Wars: Attack of the Clones (’02) and Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (’05). Smits narrated a 1987 PBS documentary “The Other Side of the Border.” He also played Congressman Matthew Santos in “The West Wing” (2004–’06) and has appeared in several episodes of “Dexter.”
Smits was selected King of Brooklyn at the 1991 Welcome Back to Brooklyn festival at which time he was also named an honoree on the Brooklyn Celebrity Path at Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
— Vernon Parker
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